Farmer killed on road

kensfarm · Oct 22, 2003

I wonder if she was on her cell phone when it happened.. she said she didn't see him.. he was holding a red/white stop sign getting horses across the road.

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/display.htm?storyid=30360

Gatorboy · Oct 22, 2003

FYI, you have to be a registered user of the FrederickNewsPost to read that story you linked too.

cowboydoc · Oct 22, 2003

How can they not file charges against this woman?? It's the same thing where I live. People drive 20 and 30 mph over the speed limit. Run stop signs and pay no attention to farmers on the road.

kensfarm · Oct 22, 2003

Sorry about that.. here's some info. I guess urban sprawl is just as dangerous to farmers as it is farmland. This is 10 minutes down the road from me.

***
A farmer trying to stop traffic so he could move a group of horses from Glade Valley Farms across Md. 26 was killed Tuesday when he was hit by a driver who told police she did not see him.

Harry Zufall, 47, of 9249 Liberty Road, was hit by Margaret Ann Magnanelli, 49, of Frederick, at about 10:50 a.m. Tuesday, police said.

Mr. Zufall apparently was holding a red and white stop sign as he was moving his horses across the two-lane highway.

Mr. Zufall's wife arrived about an hour after the wreck and collapsed when she learned of her husband's death.

Mrs. Zufall was treated by ambulance personnel from Walkersville Volunteer Rescue Co.

BigIron · Oct 22, 2003

( I wonder if she was on her cell phone when it happened.. )

Around here they get in the left lane, pick up their cell phones, then immediately slow down to a crawl. This guy would have had a fighting chance around here :-^

Paul

Slamfire · Oct 22, 2003

Drivers around here don't slow down to the speed of the tractor before they pass, sooner or later the tractor is going to turn left and the farmer will probably get killed. If she didn't see the guy with a red and white stop sign in his hand, she may have been stoned. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

CTyler · Oct 22, 2003

My GOD!.....How could you MISS THAT!!!

I've been dreading having to dig the hole to install the mailbox for our new house. Its' on the crest of a hill and you always have a few peeps that have to do 50+mph on the gravel.

Edit....
I guess I should have replied to Kensfarm since I was refering to the stop sign the poor guy was holding.

AndyM · Oct 23, 2003

( I've been dreading having to dig the hole to install the mailbox for our new house. Its' on the crest of a hill and you always have a few peeps that have to do 50+mph on the gravel. )

At our old house, the mail was only delivered to the post office. While we were building our new house this past winter, I set the post for the mailbox one day. Before I had a chance to put the mailbox on the post, it got wiped out! It seems nearly everyone on our road has had their mailboxes taken out by wild speeders and snow plow drivers. Plus, you take your life into your hands to get the mail. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

Needless to say, when we moved in, we transfered our mail from the PO box in our old town to the PO box in our new town. Much safer that way, and you don't have to replace any mailboxes either! /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

Junkman · Oct 23, 2003

a friend of mine was telling me a story about when he went to college in Miami FL back in the early 1960's. It seems that the kids would always run over the mail box of this elderly man that live on the street. One day, my friend saw him digging a hole in the front yard and went over to ask him if he needed any help. He said no and continued to dig. Sometime during the day, he planted a 6" pipe 5 feet into the ground and cemented it in. He also filled the pipe with concrete. Then he made a wooden box around the pipe and mounted his new mail box on top. Everything was fine until the weekend when they heard a loud crash in the middle of the night. It was the kids that kept running his mail box over that crashed into the new post and it didn't move...... Needless to say, that was the last time that he had a problem with the kids and the mailbox.....

MossRoad · Oct 23, 2003

he planted a 6" pipe 5 feet into the ground and cemented it in. He also filled the pipe with concrete. 

There was some discussion on this subject on TBN earlier this year. Do that around here and you'll get a big fat lawsuit, not the kids. There are numerous lawsuits going on about the big brick mailboxes in fancy neighborhoods, too. They are too solid to be put near the roadway. So if an innocent person somehow loses control of their vehicle or swerves to avoid an accident, and you had placed an imovable object close to the road, it's your fault. We are eventually moving to a piece of property that is located on a very busy road. All of the mailboxes are very inexpensive, easily replaceable and cheap. We'll probably do the same thing. /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

JTC · Oct 23, 2003

I've never heard of the power company getting sued because of all those immobile objects they put in the ground every couple hundred feet.

I think the was justice. Our problem isn't the pole but the mail box. Why doesn't anyone make a mailbox out of 1/4" CRS? I'd buy one.

Jim

gmason · Oct 23, 2003

It sure seems like this is another case of the urban sprawl. Around here we have "Cityfolk" that use the old country back roads to commute and we they see a open road in front of them they just sorta go to sleep mentally. They think it's just a little used road, but when in fact it's still used a lot by the farmers/property owners just not like the main roads they are so used to seeing all backed-up.

I had an mishap(not an accident) a while back and this 16yo driver on a learners permit, didn't slow at all for my flashing yellow lights and POW!. So, I now assume that every vehicle I come upon out our way is from another local and I give them a wide birth.
They're idiots and they can't help it.... /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
Now let us go flying through there little suburbia with our farm trucks and they would come screaming out of their house to tell us to be careful. It's a ME..ME..ME world these days... get use to it... /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

gary

TheKid · Oct 23, 2003

Here's some.

AndyM · Oct 23, 2003

Actually, for safety reasons, I think the USPS forbids the use of anything greater than a 4x4 post. About 15 years ago, the local post office ran a notice in the newspaper stating this. One of the nearby developments has fancy brick mailboxes in front of every house, so maybe this isn't the story any more?

I think I'll still stick with my locked PO box at the post office--
1) I don't have to take my life into my hands to get the mail.
2) I don't have to worry about wild drivers and snowplows taking out my mailbox.
3) I don't have to worry about someone taking my credit card statements and other personal info from a mailbox.

Sorry, now that I've totally gotten off topic!

5030 · Oct 23, 2003

MossRoad:

Seems you have the same problem in Indiana that we have in Michigan. Smashed mailboxes.

I got tired of replacing ours. We have a big one for magazines and such and 4 times in a year is too many replacements. I made up a lazy susan arrangement that the box mounts on. When the kids drive by and hit it, it just spins around.

The kids haven't tried the M-100 routine on mine yet. They did on a friend of mine, however. The kids blew his box apart more than once. He countered by taking a small box and putting it inside a large one and filling the space between with mortar. He put a vent in the back so when the kids put a lighted firecracker inside, all it does is blow the front door open. I think it's immune to baseball bats and pipes too. Could you imagine whacking a concrete lined mailbox at 30 miles per with a pipe and having the pipe come back in your face. That would most certainly be a "bad dream"

Boxman · Oct 23, 2003

My dad was having a problem with kids destroying his mail box so we welded one up out of 1/4" plate and mounted it on 4" steam line set in concrete. It's been up for about 15 years now..has a few aluminum marks and a few lead splatters from midnight target shooters but no structural damage.

boxman

Bird · Oct 23, 2003

( When the kids drive by and hit it, it just spins around )

That sounds like what my brother-in-law did. Instead of putting the post at the edge of the road, he put in plumb on the other side of the borrow ditch, with the box on a pipe sticking out by the road. Anything that hit it would just spin it around.

The place we had was on a county road and everyone had posts right at the edge of the road and there were no restrictions on what kind of post you used. Ours was on a 4" pipe set in concrete when we bought the place and we never changed it. But those who lived on farm-to-market roads had no choice. The state would send a man out to set a breakaway post with a reflector on it, and you put your mailbox on that.

In other words, apparently the state was more concerned about lawsuits from drivers hitting immovable objects than the county was. /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

MossRoad · Oct 23, 2003

When they do road projects around here, and they have to tear out the mailboxes, the county gives you a flimsy little post and a cheapy mailbox. The snowplows usually damage them extensively on the first big snow. Then you complain, they give you another one, it lasts until the next big snow, gets wiped out, etc... its almost a ritual on some of the busier county roads around her. Seems if they would use a 4x4 and a little heavier box, it would last several years and still be able to snap off if a car hit it.

Back to the subject... On the way to a state park last weekend, we came upon several combines, tractors, haywagons, etc... as it is harvest time. We went past a blind T intersection and I saw the farmer that use to rent my land. He was sitting on a tractor with his arms folded across the steering wheel and his head down. He had a bailer and a half loaded wagon. I wasn't sure why he was stopped there, but turned around and went back to make sure he wasn't ill or anything. Turned out he was waiting for one of his sons to check a field to see if it was dry enough to bail. Anyway, it would have been hard to stop in time if someone had pulled around the corner and not been paying attention.

rcaretti · Oct 23, 2003

I live less than 15 minutes from the farm where this happened. I saw it in the paper. and I just couldn't believe it, because although Liberty road is busy, there is good visibility. The farm, Glade Valley, is really a beautiful horse farm, in which someone put one heck of a lot of work into over the years.

I cannot believe the woman missed seeing the farmer, I mean it's almost impossible to do so, especially holding a sign. When I read the story, I was thinking what the heck was she doing besides watching the road...

Slamfire · Oct 24, 2003

Well Andy, that works just great until the Postal Service decides to close you Post Office. They closed ours, temporarily, and put up boxes in the next nearest Post Office. It has been almost a year and no official word on when a new office will be opened in our area. So to get the mail, hop in the car and drive 11 miles on a twisty mountain road filled with logging trucks and other hazard to the "temporary" post office box. Oh yeah, they closed the old office because of mildew. Seems after the anthrax scare they decided to pay attention to postal worker health issues.